Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘I SLEPT IN A DRAWER’
BABY video monitors, white noise speakers and self-warming milk bottles – it is fair to say baby accessories have become more advanced over recent years.
However, sometimes there is nothing wrong with the basics.
Ask Jacqueline Newman, a baby during the Second World War, who was not looked after in a hi-tech baby’s cot, but the bottom drawer of the family chest of drawers.
The 76-year-old mother-of-one from Trowbridge even still uses the drawers.
She contacted the Western Daily Press in response to another reader who wrote in over safety fears raised by a doctor on baby cardboard boxes, an idea promoted by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).
The reader, Marina Pridham, said “I wonder if he [the doctor] grew up in the late 1940s to 1950s when I did. I can clearly remember new babies
We had no cots, the drawer was your bed
until you grew up. I seem to have survived with no ill effects and the chest of drawers is still in my possession
JACQUELINE NEWMAN
sleeping in a drawer, of course lined with soft blankets.”
Mrs Newman said: “I also remember clearly being told I slept in the bottom drawer.
“I was born in 1942 when my father was away with the army so it must have been a struggle for my mother with a new baby.
“We had no cots, the drawer was your bed until you grew up. I seem to have survived with no ill effects and the chest of drawers is still in my possession.”
Mrs Newman was born in Bournemouth to parents Ken and Joyce White. She later lived in Tiverton and Trowbridge. She is now married and has one son, Timothy. The family live together in Southwick in Trowbridge along with the chest of drawers which now sits in a spare bedroom.
She added: “I thought it was amazing to see someone else remem- bered drawers being used as cots, you don’t hear of it anymore.”
The RCM said it supports the use of baby boxes to provide children with a ‘more equal start’ However, the body would not be drawn on if it
supported the use of drawers.